


oh brother i can't, i can't get through

by postfixrevolution



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Language, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Resolved Sexual Tension, Route intentionally left ambiguous, Sylvain's Self Worth Issues, mentions of glenn and miklan, they're just....going through it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 05:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20902655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: "Miklan was a murderer, but once we started having to fight against our old classmates, against people from our own Kingdom—all I could think about was howI'mthe exact same," he confesses, low and rough and spat out like the words are poison his body is trying to purge. "As if being his mirror image wasn't enough," Sylvain huffs. "Even the blood on our hands became identical.""Don't be an idiot," Felix scowls. "There's blood on all of our hands.""It's not thesame.""In what way?" he demands, louder than Felix had intended, but still too quiet compared to the buzz of alcohol in his brain. Sylvain's gaze flies up to meet his fiery own and Felix's hands shake around his cup. "In what way, Sylvain?We've all killed people we never wanted to. Why do you deserve to wallow in your own fucking misery any more than the rest of us?"Sylvain flinches.or: sylvain nurses new scars and moonshine.





	oh brother i can't, i can't get through

**Author's Note:**

> title for the fic taken from [talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKAxgYCKt8g), by coldplay
> 
> beta-read by the lovely [jenelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenelleLucia) and [fledermauss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fledermauss), to both of whom i owe my life!! this fic would be a mess if not for them <3

The skirmish against a rowdy band of local thieves ends as such skirmishes always do: easily. No one was killed and, as per the _ painfully _unsurprising usual, Sylvain was careless. 

Felix paces the length of the infirmary, arms crossed and fingers tapping an agitated rhythm against his bicep. He had borne witness to Sylvain's idiocy first hand, watched as the paladin intercepted a spear meant for him. It arced gracelessly at the hands of a lowly thief, tearing a gash from the corner of Sylvain's forehead to the opposite cheek, and he struck its maker down with crimson spilling down his face, a mere backdrop to the fire in his honeyed hazel eyes. 

Of the two startlingly clear images, Felix isn't sure which one he'd rather banish first—the blood, or the blaze.

His gaze flickers toward Sylvain, seated at one of the infirmary's beds as Manuela hovers over him. Her hands glow with the gentle light of healing magic and the white of it lights up Sylvain's face, making the countless candles that fill the room feel utterly pointless. His mind completely overlooks the fact that they illuminate Manuela and himself, casting much-needed light on the rest of the infirmary; Felix only watches Sylvain as the split flesh of his face knits itself together into a dull pink line. The shape of it is painfully familiar, but he decides not to dwell on it.

Sylvain meets his gaze as he stares, and it launches Felix back into his pacing. 

"Till your worries somewhere else," Manuela snaps. It's enough for Felix to spare a glance in her direction. "You'll plow lines into my floor with that incessant pacing." 

"I'm not worried," he grouses. No one seems to hear it.

Manuela's eyes are focused on helping Sylvain, finally cleaning away the remaining dried blood that clings to his face. Head wounds always bleed too freely, Felix thinks. She scowls as she works and he knows it isn't because of the dutifully silent paladin before her. It does not stop his pacing.

"Didn't burn off enough energy during the battle?" Sylvain quips, prompting a dissatisfied cluck from the healer as she swats at his face, urging him to stay still so she can finish. Felix decides not to grace him with eye contact as he responds. 

"What you did was unnecessary," he scoffs. Stopping at one end of the infirmary, Felix looks out the window with his back toward Sylvain. He isn't given an immediate response, and Felix imagines it's because of the glare Manuela wears, silently warning Sylvain not to interrupt her work. The scenery outside the window doesn't offer much to look at, but he stares at it anyway.

When Manuela finishes, announcing her readiness to drop gratefully into bed, Felix finally turns back around. He sees the tail end of her skirts scurrying out of the infirmary before he sees Sylvain, who looks at him like his gaze hadn't shifted since the moment Felix stopped pacing.

"It helped, didn't it?" Sylvain asks, elbow on his crossed legs and head resting atop his palm. "If I hadn't done anything, who knows what would have happened to you..." The way he trails off, gaze never straying from Felix, makes it difficult to meet his eye. "That makes it necessary."

"You were injured," Felix argues. "And I could have handled it. That makes it _ un_necessary." 

Sylvain, ever used to his stubbornness, has the gall to laugh.

"Injured, but far from dead." He winks, throwing his legs over the side of the bed and standing. Felix rolls his eyes at the theatrics. "Although, your concern is pretty touching, I have to say."

"It isn't concern."

His mind chimes in to inform him that it unfortunately _ is _, but it's not as if Sylvain has ever needed to hear it aloud to know. So much of the way they exist relies on the paladin's uncanny ability to read the things that Felix leaves pointedly unspoken. At times like these, when what lingers between them is laced with something more than just their usual rapport, Felix always feels self-conscious under Sylvain's bright hazel stare. 

Tension pulls itself tight in his chest, and Felix turns toward the door, as if physically walking away might ease it. "Pull a stunt like this again," he tacks on tersely, "and the enemy isn't the only thing you'll have to worry about."

Sylvain's footsteps are fast as they move to catch up with him.

"You wound me, Felix! I'll need more healing if you keep this up," he quips, elbowing the swordsman as they begin walking out. "Or maybe a drink. I feel like we deserve it after our rousing victory tonight. Only one minor injury has got to be a record for us, right?"

"Coming from the one who was injured, I think you're too eager for a reason to celebrate."

"Just a reason to relax a little," he repartees. Felix notices that Sylvain has begun steering them in the direction of the dining hall, yet he doesn't quite find the resolve to stop him. 

Sylvain pushes the door open first, snapping his fingers to light a small flame in his palm as he walks in. At this time of night, the dining hall is expectedly empty, so no one stops them as Sylvain grabs the first unopened bottle he finds from the liquor cabinet. The colorless moonshine inside of it glows orange as flame. 

"Hey, Felix," he hums, turning to face him. "You _ will _join me, right?" 

Felix meets his gaze briefly, caught off guard by how brightly the near flame lights up his copper eyes. The fresh scar that cuts across the Sylvain's face is spared no shadows to hide in either, and it twists Felix's stomach to see it so clearly. 

Terror is the first thing he feels—the shape of that scar is far too reminiscent of battles in lightning-storm lit towers for comfort, but the flashes of lightning that had illuminated Miklan's gaunt face are nothing like the golden firelight that hovers in Sylvain's palms. Frowning, Felix banishes the thought immediately. Guilt pools in to fill its sudden absence, and he starts rifling through the cupboards as an excuse to look away.

"I came this far, didn't I?" he asks. 

Grabbing two brass cups, he brushes past Sylvain's shoulder as he leads the way back to their dorms. The glint of a relieved smile on his face eases the heavy feeling in his chest.

When Sylvain stops them in front of his room, he pulls the door open to let Felix in first. 

"Sorry about the mess," he offers apologetically. 

Copper eyes regard the room carefully, empty save the spare set of armor lined up across his shelves and the half played game of chess sprawled atop his desk. The floor is empty and a single dead flower hangs its wilted head low on top of his bookcase. When Felix searches Sylvain's cabinets for a candle and matchbox, his drawers prove to be just as barren.

"This isn't messy. You should see my room," he snorts, placing a newly lit candle onto the desk. Sylvain deposits the bottle at the foot of his bed as he pulls over the desk chair for Felix, setting it right across from his own perch atop the bed. As he collapses into his seat, Felix swipes the liquor bottle, digging for the knife he keeps nestled in his boot to pry the wax seal off. 

"Is that an invitation?" Sylvain presses, a bright eyed smirk lighting up his features. 

"Absolutely not. I can already tell I'll be tired of you after tonight."

"You say that like you've ever been tired of me at all."

Felix holds off on responding and pops the seal off of their stolen drink. As soon as he does, the acrid scent of moonshine floods the air between them, stinging Felix's nose as he tips the bottle to fill the cups Sylvain offers him. When Sylvain raises his in a silent toast, Felix taps his own daintily against the rim of it.

"You'd be surprised," Felix deadpans, bringing the drink to his lips and sipping generously. The burn of it is immediate, stronger and far less forgiving than the aged sweetness of fine whiskey. If Sylvain feels the sharp sting of it too, he doesn't show it.

"No," he grins. "I wouldn't."

It takes a large swig of his drink to hide the incoming smile, chasing it away with a wince as acrid moonshine pours too quickly down Felix's throat. Sylvain doesn't let that discourage him, shameless as ever in his search for eye contact as they drink. 

Felix can only meet that intensity in short bursts, copper eyes occasionally flitting up to catch Sylvain's, only to look away when acknowledgement flashes brightly within them. In the low candlelight of the room, the line of Sylvain's scar is only visible if Felix seeks it out. With the rim of his cup pressed flush against his lips and the insistent memory of blood dripping generously down the curve of Sylvain's face and neck, it's all he can see.

Eventually, the silence wears the more talkative of them down.

"You look like you have something to say to me," Sylvain notes. The words tear Felix's gaze away from their insistent tracing of that scar, from one side of Sylvain's forehead to the opposite corner of his jaw. 

"I look the same as always."

"No, no." Sylvain shakes his head. "Your lips kind of purse and your cheeks puff, like there are words waiting in there and you think just closing your mouth can keep them from getting out."

"That's generally how it works," Felix drawls, taking a lazy sip from his cup. "Not that you'd know."

"Can't say I'm a fan of it." He winks, finishing up the last of his drink. After he refills it, Sylvain gestures at Felix's own, prompting a roll of the swordsman's eyes as he tips the rest back and lets Sylvain pour him another. The moonshine is strong, and he can feel the warmth already settling into his blood, loosening his tongue just enough to give Sylvain the reply he had been so insistent on hearing.

"It looked painful," Felix mutters, hiding his frown behind another sip. He looks at the scar, only to find Sylvain's eyes instead. "That cut."

"It felt a lot better after Manuela took care of it." Leaning forward, he sets his cup on the ground and reaches for one of the drawers of his desk, pulling a small hand mirror from its barren depths. Felix can only blame the alcohol for urging him to reach forward so quickly, fingers tight around Sylvain's wrist before he can pull the mirror back. 

"Felix, it's just a cut," Sylvain huffs, shaking his wrist insistently. "Besides, there's not much that can ruin a face as handsome as mine," he adds insufferably, an exaggerated smile flashing across his features. It does little to loosen Felix's grip, so Sylvain rolls his eyes, tugging hard enough to tear his hand free, mirror still unfortunately held within it. 

Felix watches with his lips pressed tight as Sylvain assesses himself. The easy smile from moments before has faded, a hand raising almost delicately to trace the crooked path of his healing wound. The hesitation behind the movement is not lost on him.

"It...won't scar," Felix says carefully, as if testing the shape of the words in his mouth. Asking if it _ will _ scar would belie too much uncertainty, and uncertainty is the last thing he wants for Sylvain, eyeing the faint line that stretches across the bridge of his nose. The thought that the cut might never fade, leaving its ugly reminder across Sylvain's face, is one that makes his stomach churn. 

"It probably won't." He doesn't appear especially concerned with the fact as he places the mirror down on the floor and returns to his drink. The nonchalance of it would make Felix feel like he had been horribly overthinking if not for the angle of Sylvain's cup in front of his mouth, lifted high enough to hide what would normally be so easy to twist into a glib smile. Sylvain hides his lips, and for that, Felix can only imagine that he's frowning. 

In the ensuing quiet, Felix watches the idle rhythm with which Sylvain tips and rights his cup as he drinks, silent as he nurses his own. The motion repeats so many times that he starts to wonder if Sylvain is drinking anything at all. When the paladin suddenly throws the rest of his liquor back, hissing softly at the sting of it, Felix is handing him the bottle before he even realizes it is in his hands.

Sylvain meets his eye instead of taking it. Felix's hand is whiteknuckled around the bottle's neck as he sets his jaw and stares back.

"Did you think I couldn't tell?" Sylvain asks eventually. He holds out his cup and Felix scoffs, tearing his gaze away to refill it. Copper eyes watch the colorless flow of moonshine instead of Sylvain's face, only bothering to peek as high as Sylvain's hand at the corner of his jaw, lingering like a stubborn spirit at the base of his cut. "You keep looking at it. It's the same shape as Miklan's, isn't it?"

To hear Sylvain acknowledge it so shamelessly is like a punch to the stomach.

"His was uglier," Felix tells him, and Sylvain snorts at that. "And yours will fade."

"I don't think I could stomach looking at myself again if it didn't," he replies, a rueful laugh to his words. The laugh does nothing to smooth the twist of his lips as he sips his moonshine, uncharacteristically silent. Felix doesn't prefer the tense quiet that settles between them, but he can't even fathom how to fill it—especially when Sylvain's words ring with painful truth. He can't say he could bear seeing Sylvain stuck with that scar forever, either. That silent agreement does little to reassure him.

When the paladin opens his mouth to speak again, it draws Felix's attention immediately.

"You know," Sylvain hums, "before the war, it never even occurred to me."

His gaze is faraway, _ contemplative_, and Felix finds it easier to look at him this way, knowing that those hazel eyes aren't in the midst of delving deep into his own.

"What?"

"I spent my entire childhood praised for being everything Miklan wasn't," Sylvain scoffs, "and here I am now, cursing crests and my own countrymen with a hero's relic I'm supposed to be _proud_ _of_, just because of who I was born as." He takes a generous drink, grimace deepening at the burn of it. 

"And it's not just this scar. Miklan was a murderer, but once we started having to fight against our old classmates, against people from our own Kingdom—all I could think about was how _ I'm _the exact same," he confesses, low and rough and spat out like the words are poison his body is trying to purge. "As if being his mirror image wasn't enough," Sylvain huffs. "Even the blood on our hands became identical."

"Don't be an idiot," Felix scowls. "There's blood on all of our hands."

"It's not the _ same_."

"In what way?" he demands, louder than he had intended, but still too quiet compared to the buzz of alcohol in his brain. Sylvain's gaze flies up to meet his fiery own and Felix's hands shake around his cup. "_In what way, Sylvain? _ We've all killed people we never wanted to. Why do you deserve to wallow in your own fucking misery any more than the rest of us?"

Sylvain flinches.

"You're—" 

He looks away, the first in this standoff to break eye contact. Deflating, Sylvain slumps into himself with a scowl, both hands wrapped loosely around his cup. 

"You're _ right_," he mutters. Hazel eyes stare into his liquor instead of toward Felix, and he feels himself start to calm down too, taking another sip of his alcohol as he waits for Sylvain to continue. "I _ don't _ deserve it. Not any more than the rest of us. We've all done things we could've lived without even _ thinking _ about... I'm no different." 

Hazel eyes lift to meet Felix's slowly, and Felix only needs to meet their unwavering intensity for a second to know that they are asking for forgiveness. 

"We... We're fighting the same war," he concedes, eyes averted. "I didn't mean that you _ don't _get to suffer, Sylvain. You just... don't get to see yourself as worse than us because of it." 

Sylvain tilts his cup back, frowning when it's far too empty to offer him anything but a meager few drops of liquor. Felix leans down to grab the bottle, filling Sylvain's cup before topping off his own.

"I hate it," Sylvain confesses. "How demonic beasts all have Miklan's face. Sometimes I do, too." His hand raises to trace the bottom half of his scar as he says that. Felix wants to wind those fingers inseparably with his own, if only to keep Sylvain from gravitating back to it. "Whenever we're forced to battle the people we used to call countrymen and classmates, all I can think about is how the blood Miklan and I share is what makes it all so _ easy_."

"That's ridiculous," Felix scoffs. "Only a fool like you would think you're anywhere _ near _ as cruel as him. It takes a monster to revel in death and violence the way he and his brainless followers did, and you... I've seen you—I _ see _you, Sylvain. There's none of the greedy lust for violence that Miklan had. Whatever it was that made him a monster, you've never had that look in your eyes."

Sylvain tilts his head to the side, studying him. The look in his eyes now—scrutinizing and needlessly, _ breathtakingly _ intense—makes Felix feel far too exposed.

"What _ is _ in my eyes, then?" he asks. Felix scowls.

"Why are you asking me? You're the one with the mirror."

"I don't have your eyes." It's a simple remark, but the meaning behind it twists like a knife into Felix's stomach. 

Sylvain shouldn't need someone else's eyes to see what makes him so much more _ human _than any of the other people they know. Felix checks his own mirror on the pre-dawn mornings that his nightmares force him to see, lighting a candle in search of whatever humanity remains after the blood he has spilled has been washed away. He wonders if Sylvain ever bothers to do the same.

"Regret," Felix tells him softly. He stares at his own reflection in the colorless, candlelit surface of his drink and finds humanity in the heavy set of his tired brows. "Even up until he died, Miklan never regretted any of the horrible things he did. Your smile stopped fooling me years ago, Sylvain. All you ever _ do _ is regret and lie about how you never let old ghosts haunt you. Mikan's the oldest of them all, and you _ still _ haven't banished him."

When Sylvain doesn't respond, Felix sighs.

"You're nothing like Miklan," he repeats, "so stop trying to make it sound that way. Your lack of self worth is fucking astounding sometimes." 

Felix scoffs, letting his next sip of moonshine linger and burn on his tongue before he swallows, grimacing at the liquid heat of it down his throat. He doesn't bring his eyes up to look at Sylvain, but he imagines that scrutinizing gaze is watching him, brows furrowed as they try to find what genuine care hides behind his outward venom. Felix hadn't meant to hide it, not in the way those imagined hazel eyes are accusing him of. "You could never be the same as that _ beast _," he murmurs lowly.

The bedsheets whisper as Sylvain sits up, leaning forward enough to begin creeping into Felix's field of vision. The slope of his posture suggests that he is staring at him, waiting for Felix to look up and meet him, but he stares at the moonshine bottle on the floor instead, trying to remember how many glasses they have had. The bottle is only a third of the way done, so he tops off his cup and refills Sylvain's own, making the mistake of meeting his eyes as he does.

Sylvain is staring at him—just as he had expected—with eyes too hazy for what little alcohol they've consumed. Felix isn't sure what to say, so he continues cradling his cup of moonshine, more comfortable in the silence when he can avoid Sylvain's stare. It isn't until Sylvain reaches forward, slowly and half in a trance, that Felix looks up again, caught like a fly in his honeyed hazel gaze. His fingers brush against the ends of his bangs, and Felix sucks in a breath.

The hand continues on, ghosting past the shell of his ear and ebbing along his hair until it reaches the tie that binds it, fingernails jumping the steps and valleys where the cord overlaps.

"_Sylvain_," he begins warningly, but the word is too fuzzy on his tongue to bear any real weight. The paladin has never been one for warnings anyway.

He pulls Felix's hair free in one fluid motion, breath leaving him in an all too audible gasp as he does. His fingers idle, half buried in Felix's hair, for a moment too long. When they draw back lazily, a few strands of Felix's hair follow with it, trailing after his fingers in fruitless pursuit. Once his hand is gone, Felix lets himself breathe, stealing glances at Sylvain through the cover of his lashes. The way he looks at him, starry eyed and quiet, makes his mouth dry.

"That was unnecessary," he bites weakly. Sylvain plays with the cord that had held up his hair, drink nestled neatly between his thighs. 

"You never wear it down," Sylvain shrugs, fingers stilling around the cord. He wraps it around the palm of his left hand, tying it messily into place. 

"For good reason. I looked too much like—" Felix cuts himself off, teeth on edge. "It got in my way." 

The stumble seems to pull Sylvain from his distracted state, turning hazel eyes back to Felix with a newfound clarity. His fingers curl into the palm that wears Felix's hair tie, the others picking up his cup to swirl the liquid idly. 

"I never understood that," Sylvain mutters. "Why people always liked to say you looked like Glenn."

Felix had technically been the first to bring him up, but there's no amount of drunk or sober that could ever feel right enough to carry on with this topic, so Felix settles on the former. He takes a generous, burning swig of his drink, letting Sylvain reach over and refill his cup once he does.

"Because I _ did_."

Sylvain snorts, a hollow, echoey sound when it is spilled into the cavern of his cup. 

"You didn't even have the same _ eyes_," he points out, as if that one physical trait made all the difference in the world. With how utterly convinced Sylvain sounds as he says it, Felix almost wants to believe him. When their hair and the sharp angle of their nose and jaw were nearly identical, hearing someone find an unfathomable world's worth of difference in the color of their eyes is almost alien. It doesn't surprise him that the one to point it out is Sylvain.

"He looked more like my father than even I did," Felix agrees. It's no wonder he was the favorite son.

"Blue," Sylvain nods absently. "And they were always pointed so _ high_. All _ you _ ever did was look to the side or to the ground," he reminisces softly, a gentle laugh coloring his words. Felix scowls, fully intending to cut him off then and there, but Sylvain doesn't even give him the chance. "But Glenn never looked at anything on earth. And that's where we were. That's where _ you _were, trying to get him to stop being a knight and just be your brother."

Felix scowls into his drink.

"Just because I kicked some sense into you about Miklan doesn't mean you need to do the same for me," he snaps weakly. "If it's _ pity_, I don't—"

"It's not." Sylvain nudges his knee against Felix's, doubtlessly trying to urge the swordsman to look up. Felix doesn't, and the knee lingers there, pressed gently against the side of Felix's own. He hears Sylvain sigh. "I never pitied you, Felix. I wouldn't— I don't tell you these things just because I think they'll make you feel better."

"That's a _ lie_." Felix can't look at him, so he stares at the ground between them, glaring holes into the wooden floor as he lets his hair serve as curtain to his scowling features.

"It's an added bonus, if anything," Sylvain replies, unaffected by the accusation. "I tell you because you need to hear them, Felix. If you keep living in the shadow of Glenn's ghost, you'll end up no better than me. And you won't have the best friend I did to kick some sense into you, either," he laughs humorlessly. "You'll just have me."

"That's _ enough_, Sylvain." He throws back his cup and when Sylvain offers him another, he shoves the bottle away, glaring at him. It clatters to the floor, spilling liquor across the carpeted stone. "I'm sick to fucking death of your self-worth issues." Felix looks away. "If you want to tell me I'm not Glenn, then I'll take it. I never...meant to doubt you on it. I _ don't_. Just stop—" He stumbles, frustrated and tripping over his own words with fingers trembling around his empty cup. 

"You're enough, alright?" The words sound small and pathetic, even to himself, who has them ringing deafeningly in his ears as he speaks. He can't even look at Sylvain with the weight of his own, shaking truths dragging his gaze down to the impossible stretch of space between them. "_Without _ the insincere smiles and self-sacrificial bullshit. Just you."

"Felix..."

"And I won't say it again," Felix cuts him off, voice shaking. "Don't ask."

"I won't."

It's entirely straightforward, a tone he wishes he could hear more of from Sylvain, and it brings Felix's gaze back up from the hole in the floor he has dug for himself. Sylvain is looking at him—as he always is, in the moments where Felix catches him and in the times where he doesn't, only feeling the ghost of hazel eyes dancing lazily across his skin—and the intensity of it takes his breath away. 

"I won't," he repeats quietly, reaching out to brush away the loose strands of hair that fall into Felix's face. When his fingertips ghost over the curve of his cheek, Felix comes undone, deflating all at once with a shudder. The sound ignites something low and warm in Sylvain's hazel eyes—snapping to life like the glow of a fire spell hovering in his palm—and his fingers curl around the curve of Felix's jaw to tug him closer. 

Sylvain's eyes are warm and lidded when he speaks next, breathing moonshine into the gap between Felix's parted lips. The sharp taste and his words—_"Can I kiss you?" _ muttered with breathless urgency against the swell of his bottom lip—make Felix feel even dizzier, empty cup dropping from his hands as he nods, wrenches Sylvain closer in reply. 

There's no distance left between them, not when Sylvain's gasp lets Felix run his tongue over the outline of his teeth, fingers tangling in his fire-red hair. Sylvain melts like a victim to his own flame, pulling Felix lazily along with him as he leans back. They move seamlessly to the bed, hands on hips that trail down to thighs digging into the bedsheets, neatly caging Sylvain's own. When they pull apart, it is with blurry eyes and Sylvain's bleary gasps, escaping his lips on the tail end of a shiver as Felix bites into his neck, nipping at the flesh just beneath the fur-lined collar of his shirt. 

"I'll commit it to memory," Sylvain tells him, his breathy laugh feathering off into a gasp as Felix tugs his collar down, exhaling low and hot against his collarbone. "You, and the day you told me I'm—"

Felix kneads Sylvain's skin between his teeth, sucking a mark against the flesh that cradles the hollow of his throat and Sylvain keens, his words swallowed by the sound and the sound followed by Felix's mouth crashing once more against his. 

"_Enough_," Felix whines, teeth on lips with petulant insistence, and Sylvain's giggle bubbles up between them with the tingle of his breath over Felix's skin. Felix pulls away at the sound, frowning until his eyes catch on Sylvain's grin, so wide that it reaches the sparkling hazel of his eyes. 

"I thought you said you wouldn't repeat it," Sylvain teases, reaching up to tuck away the strands of hair that fall and brush against his own cheeks, midnight blue against their golden glow. Felix rolls his eyes, but he smiles, unable to help it in the face of Sylvain's infectious grin. One hand lingers at the side of his head, playing with Felix's hair as he rests the other against the small of his back, keeping him close as he pulls them up to sit.

"That still stands."

"I believe you."

"No," Felix snorts, "You don't." It makes Sylvain laugh, arms curling to hug him close, pressing them chest to chest. His head feels clearer now, the buzz of alcohol burned away by the heat of Sylvain's breath in his mouth, and it lets him commit the steady weight of Sylvain's arms around him to startlingly clear memory. "We should clean up," he mutters, hands settling at the back of Sylvain's neck. Neither of them make a move to follow through with it.

"It's already all spilled, Felix. Maybe we should just make one last toast, so we can say it wasn't wasted."

"You haven't celebrated enough?"

Sylvain winks, grinning. "Not by a longshot!"

"You're insatiable. What else is there to toast to?"

"To fucked up older brothers?" he laughs, a crooked grin spreading across his features. The ridiculousness of it forces a bark of laughter from Felix's lip. He shakes his head, arms not moving from their position draped over Sylvain's shoulders. 

"I'm not fucking toasting to that," Felix tells him, as if he still had a drink to toast with anyway. Sylvain's grin does not fade as he leans his forehead against Felix's with his eyes alight, like a child ready to cast away secrets that were never kept silent to begin with. From this distance, Felix can't tell if the sting of sharp moonshine in his nose is from the spilled bottle or Sylvain's breath, warm across his cheeks.

"To us, then," Sylvain amends, quiet and laced with something electric, an emotion struggling to distinguish itself between trepidation and immeasurable hope. "Fucked up, but still here." Felix feels it too, a deep seated tension that sits low in his stomach. He slides his eyes shut, hoping that the next time they touch, it might set the feeling alight.

"To us," Felix echoes. He kisses Sylvain again, and feeling sets itself aflame.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me about sylvix on twitter [@panntherism](https://twitter.com/panntherism)!!


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